Part 2: The medicinal plants used in Katoro Ward, Bukoba District Mainen J Moshi1*, Donald F Otieno2, Pamela K Mbabazi3, Anke Weisheit3 Abstract Background: The Kagera region of north we
Trang 1R E S E A R C H Open Access
Ethnomedicine of the Kagera Region, north
western Tanzania Part 2: The medicinal plants
used in Katoro Ward, Bukoba District
Mainen J Moshi1*, Donald F Otieno2, Pamela K Mbabazi3, Anke Weisheit3
Abstract
Background: The Kagera region of north western Tanzania has a rich culture of traditional medicine use and practices The dynamic inter-ethnic interactions of different people from the surrounding countries constitute a rich reservoir of herbal based healing practices This study, the second on an ongoing series, reports on the medicinal plant species used in Katoro ward, Bukoba District, and tries to use the literature to establish proof of the
therapeutic claims
Methodology: Ethnomedical information was collected using Semi-structured interviews in Kyamlaile and Kashaba villages of Katoro, and in roadside bushes on the way from Katoro to Bukoba through Kyaka Data collected
included the common/local names of the plants, parts used, the diseases treated, methods of preparation, dosage, frequency and duration of treatments Information on toxicity and antidote were also collected Literature was consulted to get corroborative information on similar ethnomedical claims and proven biological activities of the plants
Results: Thirty three (33) plant species for treatement of 13 different disease categories were documented The most frequently treated diseases were those categorized as specific diseases/conditions (23.8% of all remedies) while eye diseases were the least treated using medicinal plants (1.5% of all remedies) Literature reports support 47% of the claims including proven anti-malarial, anti-microbial and anti-inflammatory activity or similar
ethnomedical uses Leaves were the most frequently used plant part (20 species) followed by roots (13 species) while making of decoctions, pounding, squeezing, making infusions, burning and grinding to powder were the most common methods used to prepare a majority of the therapies
Conclusion: Therapeutic claims made on plants used in traditional medicine in Katoro ward of Bukoba district are well supported by literature, with 47% of the claims having already been reported This study further enhances the validity of plants used in traditional medicine in this region as resources that can be relied on to provide effective, accessible and affordable basic healthcare to the local communities The plants documented also have the
potential of being used in drug development and on farm domestication initiatives
Introduction
The Kagera region has a magnificent culture of
herbal-ism While the Haya tribe dominates the region, there is
a lot of knowledge exchange with the neighboring tribes
like the Rukiga and Banyankore of Uganda, the Tutsi
and the Hutu of Rwanda and Burundi who have all
intermarried overtime bringing together an impressive
culture of herbal centered traditional medicine [1] Thus when one talks to people belonging to different tribes within Kagera, regardless of their education status or age, what one hears is an impressive account of herbal therapies that have been used successfully to treat differ-ent diseases
The first in the series of investigations on plants used
in traditional medicine in the Kagera region reported on the plants used in Bugabo Ward [2] This second part
of the series provides a glimpse into the plants used in traditional medicine by Issack Kato and two of his
* Correspondence: mmoshi@muhas.ac.tz
1 Department of Biological and Preclinical Studies, Institute of Traditional
Medicine, MUHAS, P.O Box 65001, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
© 2010 Moshi et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in
Trang 2colleagues; Maruzuku Mazimpaka and Hajat Nuria
Kyejo, all who are traditional healers practicing in
Katoro Ward This study therefore adds to the
continu-ing efforts to document [2], evaluate for biological
activ-ity [3-5], and identify how plant genetic resources in the
Kagera region can be mainstreamed into the social and
economic development of the local people, for example,
through on-farm cultivation and the development of
marketable medicinal plant products The study is
an ethnomedical documentation of medicinal plants
in Katoro Ward of, Bukoba district, north western
Tanzania
Methodology
Description of the study site
Katoro is a ward within Bukoba district and lies on the
south west of Bukoba town and situated at 1° 23′ 59′′
South, 31° 30′ 1′′ East (Figure 1) Like the rest of the
Bukoba district, the Katoro ward has good rainfall and
good vegetation cover that provides abundant resources
for traditional medicines
The Ethnobotanical visit and documentation of plant information
Independently, the research team established contact with three informants (Issack Kato, Maruzuku Mazim-paka and Hajat Nuria Kyejo) who practice traditional medicine in Kashaba village in Katoro A field visit was, thereafter, made to the area between 28thFebruary and
2ndMarch, 2008 During this visit ethnomedical infor-mation was collected using semi-structured interviews [6] as the team walked, accompanied by the informants, through the banana farms, roadside and surrounding bushes and thickets of Kyamlaile and Kashaba villages Voucher specimens were made for all plants collected and these were subsequently identified by Mr Selemani Haji of the Department of Botany, University of Dar es Salaam Duplicate vouchers are kept at the Herbaria of the Botany Department, University of Dar es Salaam, and that of the Institute of Traditional Medicine, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences
Literature survey to establish proof of claims
Literature information was retrieved from the NAPRA-LERT data base at the School of Pharmacy, University
of Illinois at Chicago The strength of information obtained from the informants was evaluated based on its agreement with similar therapeutic claims in litera-ture from elsewhere or evidence in literalitera-ture of labora-tory results that support the claims
Results Medicinal Plant diversity
A total of 33 plant species belonging to 31 genera and
19 plant families were documented (See additional file 1)) The largest proportion of medicinal plants collected belonged to the family Asteraceae (21%), followed by Fabaceae (12.1% each) and Euphorbiaceae (9.0%) The main source of these plants in terms of number of spe-cies were trees (30.3% of the total number of spespe-cies) followed by shrubs (39.4%) and herbs (21.2%) The remaining 9.09% were climber herbs and shrubs
Diseases treated
A wide variety of medical conditions were treated using remedies made from medicinal plants Most of the plants used had more than a single therapeutic use For example, Draceana steudneri was used for treating fibroids, splenomegaly and asthma On the other hand, many diseases were also treated using a wide range of plants Malaria for example, was treated using Senna alata, Clerodendrum myricoides, Dalbergia nitidula, Eriosema psoraleoides, Hygrophylla auriculata, Rhus vul-garis and Vernonia amygdalina The most frequent ail-ments treated with medicinal plants were those categorized here as specific diseases/conditions (Table 1)
Figure 1 Map showing the study site at Katoro ward, Bukoba
District (Source: Google Maps 2010).
Trang 3comprising conditions like malaria, dysentery, cancer,
yellow fever etc and were treated using the largest
number of remedies (23.8% of all remedies) On the
lower end, 1.5% of the remedies were used to treat eye
diseases, 2.98% cardiovascular and circulatory diseases
(e.g anemia), 4.47% respiratory tract infections (e.g chest
pains) and 4.47% skeletal muscular problems (e.g body
spasms) Reproductive problems like difficulties to
conceive and low libido were treated using 14.2% of all
the remedies used
Plant parts used
The plant parts used for making herbal preparations
were the roots, leaves, stem bark, root bark, pods and
other aerial parts The leaves were the most frequently
used (20 species) followed by the roots (13 species), and
stem bark and other aerial parts (each 4 species) Other
parts like the pods were also used, for example in
Kige-lia africanaand the root bark in Parinari curatellifolia,
but rarely
Herbal medicines and their preparation
Mono therapies based on preparations made from a
sin-gle plant were the most dominant, although many
reme-dies where more than one plant was used were also
common Those that involved the use of two species
included, for example, the boiling of Carissa tomentosa
roots with the bark of Elaedendron buchananii or
pow-ders of the two being mixed and taken with tea or
mixed with roots of Tragia furialis for the treatment of
hernia, backache or taken as an aphrodisiac Others
included a decoction made from boiling the roots of
Combretum collinumand Rhus vulgaris being drunk for
the treatment of dysentery while another made from
boiling the leaves of Dalbergia nitidula with the stem
bark of Sapium ellipticum was used to treat malaria
Fresh leaves of Dichrocephala integrifolia were pounded
with the leaves of Ageratum conyzoides and the juice squeezed out and applied to the eyes as an eye drop while for the treatment of indigestion, the leaves of Hos-lundia oppositawere mixed with the leaves of Ocimum basilicum, boiled and the decoction drunk A decoction made from boiling the leaves of Pappea capensis with those of Vernonia brachycalyx was drunk for the treat-ment of backaches and to treat chickenpox, the leaves
of Rhus natalensis mixed with those of Vernonia amyg-dalinawere boiled and the decoction drunk Treatments that involved the use of three or more plants in combi-nation included, for example, the pounding of the roots and/or leaves of Desmodium salicifolium, Elaeodendron buchananii and Tragia furialis then boiling and taking the decoction as an aphrodisiac Others included the treatment of skin rashes and joint pains and relieving of feet from burning sensations by applying the root or stem bark powder of Maytenus senegalensis mixed with the root powders of Rauvolfia vomitora, Parinari cura-tellifolia and Ozoroa insignis in a fat base The treat-ment of yellow fever involved pounding and boiling the leaves of Trema orientalis with those of Combretum col-linum and Erythrina abbysinica and taking the decoc-tion Backache was also treated using a decoction prepared from a combination of four different species The decoction was made by boiling the root powder of Tragia furialis mixed with that of Elaeodendron bucha-naniior Spathodea campanulata and Carisa spinarum and then drunk or the powders were simply mixed with water and taken A second treatment of malaria involved taking a decoction made from the leaves and/or roots of Vernonia amygdalinamixed with the stem bark of Rhus natalensis and the leaves of Dalbergia nitidula, Desmo-dium salicifolium and Eriosema psoraleoides The most common methods used to prepare most of the therapies were making of decoctions (46.4%), pounding (14.2%), squeezing (10.7%), making infusions (8.9%), burning (7.1%) and grinding to powder (5.4%)
Literature based proof of traditional healers’ claims
Out of all the plants used by traditional healers in Katoro, the uses of 47% of them (16 out of 34 species) are supported by reports of similar uses or proven biolo-gical activity in the literature There were no reports of toxicity for any of the species except for Ageratum cony-zoidesreported to have caused toxicity to sheep [7] The plants whose therapeutic claims are well supported by the literature include Ageratum conyzoides [8-10], Bidens pilosa[11-14], Boerhavia diffusa [15], Capparis tomentosa [16], Cassia alata [17-19], Clerodendrum myricoides [20,21] Others are Combretum collinum [22], Dichrocephala integrifolia [23], Flueggea virosa [24,25], Hoslundia opposita [26], Jatropha curcas [27,28], Lantana camara [29-31], Melanthera scandens
Table 1 Number of plant species used to treat diseases
within different disease categories (The disease
categories were adopted from Ssegawa and Kasenene,
2007[40])
Disease Category Number of plants
Cardiovascular and circulatory 2
Gastro-intestinal diseases 6
Respiratory tract infections 3
Female genital system 4
Skeletal muscular system 3
Skin diseases and subcutaneous tissue 7
Infectious diseases 10
Child hood diseases and conditions 2
Specific diseases and conditions 16
Trang 4[32], Microglossa pyrifolia [33,34], Rubia cordifolia
[35-37] and Vernonia amygdalina [32,38,39]
Discussion
This is the second of an ongoing series to document
plants that are used in Kagera region, northwestern
Tanzania, as traditional medicines The plants that have
been documented from Katoro are relatively few
com-pared to the rich plant diversity that is known to be in
the Kagera region [2] However, the proportion of
claims made by traditional healers in Katoro concerning
some of the plants documented in this study and which
are supported by literature evidence of proven biological
activity or similar ethnomedical uses elsewhere is
remarkable Thus therapeutic claims made concerning;
Ageratum conyzoides, Bidens pilosa, Boerhavia diffusa,
Capparis tomentosa, Cassia alata, Clerodendrum
myri-coides, Combretum collinum, Dichrocephala integrifolia,
Flueggea virosa, Hoslundia opposita Jatropha curcas,
Lantana camara, Melanthera scandens, Microglossa
pyr-ifolia, Rubia cordifolia and Vernonia amygdalina can be
taken to be credible, given that these plants either have
identical uses elsewhere or their biological activities
have been proven It has been suggested that the
identi-cal use of a medicinal plant by different people from
dif-ferent areas is often considered to be a good and reliable
indicator of the plants curative properties [40]
The Kagera region is one place in Tanzania where
there is a remarkable interchange of culture by ethnic
groups from different countries e.g the Rukiga and
Banyankore of Uganda, the Tutsi and the Hutu of
Rwanda and Burundi all who have intermarried over
time bringing together an impressive culture of herbal
centered traditional medicine [1] This culture is
indeed entrenched among the different ethnic groups
in Kagera, and unlike other parts of Tanzania, people
from all walks of life value traditional medicine,
including even the well educated, who in other places
would not so proudly talk of the benefits of traditional
medicines
Some plants previously documented in Kagera and
used for the treatment of bacterial infections and wound
healing [2] have been found to have antibacterial
prop-erties [3,5] and results from brine shrimp toxicity tests
also suggest that they have low toxicity [4] This goes to
show that Kagera region, within which Katoro falls, has
a repository of plants that can be relied upon for the
treatment of various illnesses that the local communities
have to deal with now and again
Conclusion
This study shows that the therapeutic claims made on
plants used in traditional medicine in Katoro ward of
Bukoba district are credible given that 47% of the claims are well supported by the literature It also enhances the validity of the plants as resources that can be relied on to provide effective and affordable healthcare to the local communities The plants documented in this study thus also have the potential of being used in drug develop-ment and on farm domestication/cultivation initiatives
Additional material
Additional file 1: Medicinal plants used in Katoro ward; Bukoba District The file contains a list of medicinal plant species, their uses, parts used and methods of preparation, together with information from the literature supporting the traditional therapeutic claims.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the traditional healers who provided the information constituting this manuscript and their willingness to allow this information
to be published We thank the NAPRALERT Data base of the University of Illinois at Chicago for allowing us access and literature retrieval We also thank Mr Selemani Haji for identifying the plants and Mr Superatus Chuma and Mr Daniel Kamala for their contribution to this work This collaborative Lake Victoria Research (VicRes) is financially supported by Sida/SAREC through the Inter-University Council of East Africa (IUCEA) The project is VicRes Project No 31 (see http://www.vicres.net).
Author details
1 Department of Biological and Preclinical Studies, Institute of Traditional Medicine, MUHAS, P.O Box 65001, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.2Department of Biological Sciences, Moi University, Eldoret, Kenya 3 Faculty of Development Studies, Mbarara University of Science and Technology (MUST), P.O Box
1410, Mbarara, Uganda.
Authors ’ contributions MJM, DFO, AW, PKM, carried out the design of the study, which is being implemented in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda MJM interviewed traditional healers in Bukoba Rural District, compiled the information which was subsequently synthesized by MJM, AW and DFO to this final manuscript All authors read, revised and approved the final manuscript.
Competing interests The authors have no competing interests in the project, and share the aspirations of the local people of Katoro ward to bring good healthcare services to their community.
Received: 29 May 2010 Accepted: 22 July 2010 Published: 22 July 2010 References
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doi:10.1186/1746-4269-6-19 Cite this article as: Moshi et al.: Ethnomedicine of the Kagera Region, north western Tanzania Part 2: The medicinal plants used in Katoro Ward, Bukoba District Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine 2010 6:19.
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